Yeah, I said SECOND remake. Leonard Maltin IS good for something. Seems the Burt Reynolds original was released in England as MEAN MACHINE, and in 2001 they did a remake--also called MEAN MACHINE--which substituted soccer (which, of course, they call football) but was otherwise a straightforward remake (that everybody hated).

So this new Adam Sandler movie is actually the second LONGEST YARD remake in five years!

Okay, why waste time? Whether or not you buy Sandler as an MVP quarterback, it must be said that he carries the film quite capably without any of his typical "shredding your nerves with annoying behavior" garbage. The trouble here is that since Sandler is relatively restrained, the makers of this new version didn't trust that their film would be funny enough, and therefore went the opposite direction with almost everything ELSE.

The original didn't need to go for laughs by putting estrogen in Kevin Nash's steroids and having him go completely over the top with his newfound femininity--I guess they thought we wouldn't get the joke unless we saw him finally cavorting with the transvestite cheerleaders. And when they get Stone Cold Steve Austin to shit his pants, they figure we might not get the point right away, so they say it about twenty times in a row (literally).

Oh, and could you PLEASE throw in a few more gay jokes? There weren't nearly enough. Really. I don't think anyone got the idea at all.

Hey--the movie moves along. Sandler is good. Chris Rock is fun. Nelly does a fine job, James Cromwell is well-cast as the evil warden, and it's great to see Burt Reynolds back in the thick of it, too.